385 law, of all a man's goods and chattels, for misbehaviours and inadvertencies that at present hardly feem to deserve so severe a punishment. Our antient law-books, which are founded upon the feodal provifions, do not therefore often condefcend to regulate this species of property. There is not a chapter in Britton or the mirroir, that can fairly be referred to this head; and the little that is to be found in Glanvil, Bracton, and Fleta, seems principally borrowed from the civilians. But of later years, fince the introduction and extenfion of trade and commerce, which are entirely occupied in this fpecies of property, and have greatly augmented it's quantity and of course it's value, we have learned to conceive different ideas of it. Our courts now regard a man's perfonalty in a light nearly, if not quite, equal to his realty: and have adopted a more enlarged and less technical mode of confidering the one than the other; frequently drawn from the rules which they found already established by the Roman law, wherever those rules appeared to be well-grounded and appofite to the case in question, but principally from reason and convenience, adapted to the circumstances of the times; preferving withal a due regard to antient usages, and a certain feodal tincture, which is ftill to be found in fome branches of perfonal property. BUT things perfonal, by our law, do not only include things moveable, but also fomething more: the whole of which is comprehended under the general name of chattels, catalla; which, fir Edward Coke fays, is a French word fignifying goods. And this is true, if understood of the Norman dialect; for in the grand couftumier, we find the word chattels used and set in oppofition to a fief or feud; fo that not only goods, but whatever was not a feud, were accounted chattels. And it is, I apprehend, in the fame large, extended, negative sense, that our law adopts it; the idea of goods, or moveables only, being not sufficiently comprehenfive to take in every thing that our law confiders as a chattel interest. ☐ 1 Inft. 118. VOL. II. A a b c. 87. For BOOK II. For fince, as the commentator on the coutumier observes, there are two requifites to make a fief or heritage, duration as to time, and immobility with regard to place; whatever wants either of these qualities is not, according to the Nor ́mans, an heritage or fief; or, according to us, is not a real estate: the confequence of which in both laws is, that it must be a personal eftate, or chattel. CHATTELS therefore are distributed by the law into two kinds; chattels real, and chattels perfonal. I. CHATTELS real, faith fir Edward Coke, are fuch as · concern, or favour of, the realty; as terms for years of land, wardships in chivalry (while the military tenures fubfifted) the next presentation to a church, estates by ftatutemerchant, ftatute-ftaple, elegit, or the like; of all which we have already spoken. And these are called real chattels, as being interests ifsuing out of, or annexed to real estates : of which they have one quality, viz. immobility, which denominates them real; but want the other, viz. a fufficient, legal, indeterminate duration: and this want it is, that conftitutes them chattels. The utmost period for which they can laft is fixed and determinate, either for such a space of time certain, or till fuch a particular sum of money be raised out of such a particular income; fo that they are not equal in the eye of the law to the lowest estate of freehold, a lease for another's life: their tenants were confidered upon feodal principles, as merely bailiffs or farmers; and the tenant of the freehold might at any time have destroyed their interest, till the reign of Henry VIII. A freehold, which alone is a real estate, and feems (as has been said) to answer to the fief in Normandy, is conveyed by corporal inveftiture and livery of feifin; which gives the tenant fo ftrong a hold of the land, that it never after can be wrested from him during c Cateux font meubles et immeubles ficomme vrais meubles font qui transporter fe peuvent, et enfuivir le corps; inmeubles font chofes qui ne peuvent enjuivir le corps, niftre transportees, et tout ce qui n'eft point his life, but by his own act, of voluntary transfer or of forfeiture; or else by the happening of fome future contingency, as in eftates, per auter vie, and the determinable freeholds mentioned in a former chapter f. And even these, being of an uncertain duration, may by poffibility laft for the owner's life; for the law will not presuppose the contingency to hap→ pen before it actually does, and till then the estate is to all intents and purposes a life eftate, and therefore a freehold, intereft. On the other hand, a chattel interest in lands, which the Normans put in oppofition to fief, and we to freehold, is conveyed by no feifin or corporal inveftiture, but the poffeffion is gained by the mere entry of the tenant himself; and it is fure to expire at a time prefixed and determined, if not fooner. Thus a lease for years must necessarily fail at the end and completion of the term; the next presentation to a church is fatisfied and gone the inftant it comes into poffeffion, that is, by the first avoidance and presentation to the living; the conditional estates by statutes and elegit are determined as foon as the debt is paid; and fo guardianships in chivalry were sure to expire the moment that the heir came of age. And if there be any other chattel real, it will be found to correspond with the reft in this effential quality, that it's duration is limited to a time certain, beyond which it cannot fubfift. 2. CHATTELS perfonal are, properly and ftrictly speaking, things moveable; which may be annexed to or attendant on the person of the owner, and carried about with him from one part of the world to another. Such are animals, household-stuff, money, jewels, corn, garments, and every thing else that can properly be put in motion, and transferred from place to place. And of this kind of chattels it is, that we are principally to speak in the remainder of this book; having been unavoidably led to confider the nature of chattels real, and their incidents, in the former chapters which were employed upon real estates: that kind of property being of a mongrel amphibious nature, originally endowed with one only of the characteristics of each fpecies of things; the immobility of things real, and the precarious duration of things perfonal. CHATTEL interefts being thus diftinguished and distri•, buted, it will be proper to confider, firft, the nature of that property, or dominion, to which they are liable; which must be principally, nay folely, referred to perfonal chattels: and, fecondly, the title to that property, or how it may be loft and acquired. Of each of thefe in it's order. O.F CHAPTER THE TWENTY FIFTH. PROPERTY IN PERSONA L. THINGS PROPA ROPERTY, in chattels perfonal, may be either in poffeffion; which is where a man hath not only the right to enjoy, but hath the actual enjoyment of, the thing: or else it is in action; where a man hath only a bare right, without any occupation or enjoyment. And of these the former, or property in poffeffion, is divided into two forts, an abfolute and a qualified property. I. FIRST then of property in possession absolute; which is where a man hath, solely and exclufively, the right, and also the occupation, of any moveable chattels; fo that they cannot be transferred from him, or cease to be his, without his own act or default. Such may be all inanimate things, as goods, plate, money, jewels, implements of war, garments, and the like fuch also may be all vegetable productions, as the fruit or other parts of a plant, when severed from the body of it; or the whole plant itself, when fevered from the ground; none of which can be moved out of the owner's poffeffion without his own act or confent, or at least without doing him an injury, which it is the business of the law to prevent or remedy. Of these therefore there remains little to be faid. BUT with regard to animals, which have in themselves a principle and power of motion, and (unless particularly confined) can convey themselves from one part of the world to |